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+-J C Q) Choosing a bread knife To saw or to slice? BY MARYELLEN DRISCOLL - 0.. E - :J 0Q) Top Pick Wusthof-Trident Classic $63 for a 9-inch knife (a 10-inch version is $82.50) high-carbon stainless-steel blade; high-impact polypropylene handle www.cutlery.com 800-859-6994 Everyone loved this knife. Whether it was thick, crusty bread or a soft loaf with tender, compact crumbs, slicing with this knife was smooth and practically effortless. PROS: Solid feel-well balanced and substantial; sharp blade; point at tip drags beautifully through tough bottom crusts. CONS: Although no one complained about the 9-incher we tested, the 1 Q-inch blade would be perfect for slicing wide, round loaves. I t took seven stitches across my index finger before I bought my first bread knife. The doctor assumed I was yet another bagel-slicing casualty. I had to correct him: "It was a crusty peasant loaf." I may have had an ill-equipped kitchen, but I wasn't about to be an ordinary statistic. A bread knife is really the only safe tool for cutting through a loaf of breada knife with a straight edge can slip. It's also remarkably good for slicing through tough- skinned yet tender-fleshed fruits, including tomatoes, peaches, and plums. But there's such a wide selection of styles and sizes that it can be hard to know which to buy. For this article, we put eleven bread knives to the test, slicing crusty peasant loaves, firm sourdough baguettes, thin-crusted Italian loaves, bagels, and tomatoes. Of the eleven, five stood out as worthy of recommendation (featured, left to right, in order of preference). What set these five apart was that they were sharp, comfortable to hold, and able to slice smoothly and cleanly, without requiring an awkward sawing motion. Maryellen Driscoll is Fine Cookings editor at large . • Should you sharpen your bread knife? Because bread knives come in such infrequent contact with a cutting board (compared to, say, a chef's knife), they rarely need sharpening. Even when they do drag across a board, the sharpest parts of the blade-the rounded part between the "teeth"-never come into contact with the hard surface. If your bread knife does need sharpening, however, don't run it across a sharpening steel. Bring it to a professional knife sharpener (check your local yellow pages), who will have the proper tools to sharpen a serrated blade. Tips for chOOSing A knife is a very personal tool, so we recommend you buy from a store that lets you hold the knife out of its packaging. This is the only way you'll get a sense for how it feels in your one-of-a-kind hand. Examine the blade Choose pointed versus scalloped serrations. Bread knives with the traditional pointed serrations can bite into a thick crust, giving the knife a firm grip on the bread 16 FI E COOKING a bread knife while the sharp edges of the blade (the rounded part be- of room for the back and forth motion of slicing. tween the points) do the slic- A pointed tip is handy. Knives ing. In the test, knives that had with pointed versus rounded scalloped rather than pointed edges proved slippery when breaking through top crusts and were less effective at slicing. The exception was the Mac knife (opposite). The longer the blade, the Be sure the blade is sturdy, better. Eight-inch blades were not flexible. Hold the knife at generally too short. A ten-inch knife is ideal-able to span a an angle on its side (handle side up) and apply pressure. round peasant loaf with plenty The blade shouldn't bend. tips were better at slicing through the bottom crust, the toughest part of a loaf. You can drag the pointed tip at a slight angle back through the bottom crust with little effort.